As You Like It: Read for Your Life

Noisy, excited kids filled the room. They moved from box to box, searching for something they hadn’t read before. Some of the younger kids found their perfect book and plopped down to read, unable to wait for their parents to purchase it, let alone until they got it home. Parents read to young children while their older siblings still hunted. Welcome to the used book sale at the Canton Public Library — an event that many wait for all year.

I spoke to teachers who came to buy for their classrooms, ecstatic upon finding a class set of Goosebumps.

“This is the only way that I can afford to send my students home with books,” one third grade teacher told me. “Some of them have never owned a book in their lives.”

That wasn’t true of the kids who were there that Saturday morning. These were the fortunate ones, brought up in houses filled with books. They visited the library every week for story time, or research, or to graze the stacks for the sheer pleasure of reading.

“Mom, look at all these books!” one little boy screamed excitedly as he walked into the room.

“But dad, I want more books,” a young lady pleaded with her father upon being told that she had enough and they had to leave.

I totaled up paperbacks and hardcover books, fiction and non-fiction, mysteries and classics. Four paperbacks or two hardcover books for a dollar — people couldn’t believe how little cash they had to hand over. “Are you sure?” they asked me again and again.

“Oh yes,” I assured them as I bagged their purchases. “Just promise me you’ll enjoy them.”

Many kids struggled to narrow down their selections. Even as a parent would ask, “Are you sure you’re going to read this?” They would answer, “But mom, you don’t understand. I need this book!”

How often do you hear a kid say that? Families carried out bags of books, all of them smiling, all of them excited about going home to read. Others went on to the adult room to collect yet more books. These are families who understand that reading is the gateway to the future, to success, to the world. These are kids who will probably not drop out of school.

They are the opposite of my GED students, who dropped out at 16 or 17 and are struggling to keep their heads above water. When I ask them if they like to read, they look at me as if it was a trick question.

When I ask them what they read, they tell me the newspaper — the horoscope or the sports pages. Some may pick up a magazine; a few read the Bible. When I ask if they read novels, they give me the look that they reserve for crazy people, though they are too polite to tell me so.

There will be a hearing in the State House discussing whether kids should be able to drop out of school at 16. Boston city councilors Tito Jackson and John Connolly are sponsoring a home-rule petition that would force students to stay in school until they are 18 years old. In his September 24 column, the Boston Globe’s Adrian Walker quotes Jackson as saying:

We won’t let them drink or smoke or vote at 16, but we let them drop out of life at 16. This is about what’s best, what’s right, and what’s responsible for our kids.

The best part about this legislation is that raising the dropout age to 18 is not its only aim.

The state legislation, proposed by Representative Martha Walz, is far more comprehensive. It calls for raising the dropout age gradually to allow school districts to develop strategies for teaching kids who have given up on traditional classrooms.

It’s not enough to simply pass a law to raise the dropout age. We also have to figure out why so many of our kids want to drop out. The graduation rate in Boston is only 63 percent, and even those who graduate struggle in college. Connolly has talked to teachers who tell him that kids as young as 12 are already planning to drop out when they’re 16. We need to understand why they are already disengaged at 12 years old, and we have to develop programs that will keep them in school. This is everyone’s problem. Walker points out that:

Mounting evidence says dropouts are far more likely to be unemployed, live in poverty, or end up incarcerated than their peers who graduate from high school. A study in 2009 by Northeastern’s Center for Labor Market Studies put the average income of high school dropouts at less than $9,000 a year. Jackson says that comes with a heavy price tag for taxpayers, when some of those dropouts stray.

“We spend $11,000 a year to educate a student but $46,000 for incarceration,” he said.

The price is high whether you look at it financially or socially. Disengagement begins earlier than 12. It begins when there is no one to read to a child, to take him to the library, to introduce him to the thrill of words flying across a page. Any program we develop to keep our children engaged must be based on reading. Any child who believes that she needs books like the air she breathes will find her own way in the world.

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Posted by Joan Florek Schottenfeld on Oct 5 2011. Filed under As You Like It, Featured Content, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.